


Rain Is Falling, Looks Like Love

by everlit (Ink)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink/pseuds/everlit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Fuck, you don't even know, do you? You're the reason I'm alive.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain Is Falling, Looks Like Love

**Author's Note:**

> A Homestuck Shipping Olympics bonus round entry. The prompt is right [here!](http://hs-olympics.livejournal.com/9563.html?thread=1532507#t1532507)

_No, you egregious dribblesponge, I would not like to watch shitty Earth movies with you. I would rather rip out my own tongue and eat it than do that._

 _Shit, you're asleep, aren't you?_

 _You deserve some kind of dumbfuck award, John Egbert. Have you ever looked at your own face? God, I swear your skin cells are sloughing off--they just can't bear to be on your body one second longer than they have to. I can't blame them. If I was a part of your body, I'd die in protest._

 _Have you ever--_

 _No. No, forget that, stupidest fucking question I ever asked. If we were to saw apart your skull--and believe me, I am sorely temped sometimes--we would find nothing but cobwebs and rainbows and that moronic Nic Cage character. I don't think you're capable of anything resembling self-examination. You could not spell the word doubt if I gave you a wriggler's wordbook and a magnifying glass._

 _Sometimes I--god, I hate you, you know that? I know I said I didn't, but I was forgetting just how stupid you are._

 _Sometimes I think--I've never done anything remotely right in my life, and it's even goddamn true. I don't even--you don't know--I killed my lusus. Killed all our lusii. Let my best friend die because I couldn't pull my head out of my ass in time. Rushed through the game--ruined everything by being too fucking impatient. Let Eridan happen, let Gamzee--fuck, Gamzee, I didn't even kill him when I had the chance, I thought I could still save him. I thought, if I could just save him--_

 _Have you ever thought--do you ever think, I can't save anyone at all? That you just can't, you are so fucking inept that any positive contribution you try to make goes awry somehow--no, of course not._

 _I'm doing this for them, you know. Terezi and Kanaya and Aradia. But I--shit, sometimes I just think, what's the point? I'm only going to make everything worse. The whole universe would be better off if Karkat Vantas never existed, if he just quietly shuffled off this mortal coil and left all the halfway competent people to their lives--_

 _Fuck._

 _Fuck, you don't even know, do you? You're the reason I'm alive._

 

***

 

You are standing in front of the sink, but it might as well be a nuclear reactor for all the sense it makes to you now. You wipe your glasses on your shirt--the part that doesn't have any blood on it. You think: focus, focus.

You turn on the faucet and begin to wash the blood out.

(She would have been Rose's mother, in another life, in another lifetime: she was so small, smaller than her daughter-mother-daughter, and she'd still been warm in your arms--)

Blood, of course, is not that easy to get out of anything. You run the shirt under hot water and reach for the--no, not the soap, the trolls had something that works better, Rose said--wait, is this the right bottle? You can't read the labels, they're all in Alternian. Shit. Shit.

You don't know how to wash out blood, and you are crying.

"Egbert."

"Y--oh, hi, Karkat!" You put on your best fake-cheery voice. It sounds kind of like a frog dying. "I'm kind of busy right now, but we can chat later, palhoncho to palhoncho, I promise--"

Karkat just snorts--before you know it, he's right up next to you, taking the bottle out of your hands. "This is pore cleanser, you moron. Sit down."

You sit.

"Humans. You've probably never washed bloodstains out of anything, have you?" He keeps talking, though, not waiting for your response. "And just when I thought you couldn't get any more inept--take some tissues or something, God, you look miserable." He stops. When he speaks again, it's quieter. Softer. "It was Lalonde, wasn't it? The other one?"

"Yeah." You don't look at him. There's something burning behind your eyes, and if you keep looking at him you're probably going to start crying again. It's like a disease. You're tearllergic to Karkat.

That doesn't even make any sense. "Karkat," you say. "Do you--do you ever think--"

He stops. Looks at you. And you don't know what you were going to say--the silence is swallowing your words--but you don't really have a choice. "Have you ever thought that--you keep trying and trying to make things better, but it never works, and you don't know if you can anymore--"

Silence. Karkat drops the shirt, drops the bottle, lets both float away in the sink. "Egbert," he says, "you double-dipping dipshit--"

His hands are around your wrists and his eyes are--really big, actually, and they kind of glow. "You are a modern marvel." He pronounces every syllable very clearly. "You probably shit sunshine, and you have three humans who hang on your every word. If anything happened to you Lalonde and Strider would probably expire of sheer nihilism."

"That is so not a thing, Karkat," you croak. Wow, your faces are really close--

"That's not the point. The point is--" he swallows-- "you're not like the rest of us, okay? You could sit around all day with that ridiculous smile plastered to your face and it would--somehow--make things better."

All of a sudden, you can't breathe. "Oh."

Something in your brain faintly registers that the two of you are having a capital-M Moment, and not in the friendbuddy leaderchief way either: in the way where you're beginning to think Karkat might drop to one knee and propose hatemarriage to you or something, and wow, wouldn't that be awkward. But you don't have time to think about that, because he rockets forward then, eyes wide and terrified, and--

Well. You think he means to kiss you. What he actually does is sort of crush his mouth against your cheek.

"Shit," he says, still half against your skin. "Shit. Fuck, I didn't mean--"

"No," you say, "no, it's fine, just, um--try not to miss next time?"

"I didn't fucking do it on purpose, you ass--wait. Wait." He drops your hands. "You said you weren't a homosexual!"

You rub at your wrists absently. You can feel your face getting hot. "Um. Well. I guess I was wrong?"

"What do you mean _you were wrong,_ you nooksucking lacksponge, how is that even a thing--"

You hold up your hands. "I mean I changed my mind! What, am I not allowed to do that or something?"

"No!" Karkat shouts, face a splotchy gray-and-red. Then he gets this--adorably confused look on his face. "I mean, yes! I mean. Shit."

And you can't help it: despite the blood and the--everything, you're laughing, giggling through your tears. "Thanks, Karkat."

"Save your thanks, I didn't come here to tell you fucking jokes." But he's looking at you, soft and sad, like he wants to keep you here in this moment forever and knows he can't, and it puts this warm feeling into your chest. You think: maybe, some day, it will be all right.

 

***

 

 _You don't even know, do you? You're the reason I'm alive._


End file.
